"Control yourself." "Are you going to Heaven or Hell?" "This ship is going under." Meric Long, vocalist/guitarist for San Francisco duo the Dodos, makes a lot of broad statements on the band's fourth studio album. Fortunately, the music fills in the blanks. Long plays an acoustic guitar with determined malice, resorting to long, graceful, fingerpicked arpeggios in an almost classical style — he just might be the Esteban of indie rock. Logan Kroeber isn't flashy behind the drum kit, but his intricate, joyous thud is inspired. On their previous album, Time To Die (2009), they were positioned to make a grand statement, working with indie-god producer Phil Ek and adding a third member to their ranks. Here, they're back to a duo, but they sound huge, realizing their potential, splitting the difference between Animal Collective's kaleidoscopic playground stomp and the tuneful craft of the Shins. "Going Under" deploys abrupt, wicked tempo/time changes, and the ecstatic highlight "Good" explodes from behind a wall of acoustic guitars with an atom bomb of speaker-splitting overdubs, strings swirling amid the clatter. One can only assume the album title was a joke.

DevilDriver | Beast Would it be blasphemous to compare DevilDriver with the almighty Pantera? Sure, perhaps. But the only reference for the bludgeoning brutality of Beast is the latter days of the Texas-based metal militants and their pushing of the envelope into breakneck energy, aggression, and power

A triumphant Reks returns home after a Euro blitz Thank the good lord Nas for Europe. Say what you will about their snotty languages and odd sneakers, young people in urban Denmark, France, and Germany have kept sophisticated hardcore hip-hop alive, allowing savants like Lawrence native Reks to win a slice of the success that he deserves.

Screw the Ides of March — beware Bodega Girls When music writers start playing the futures game, it's usually a good idea to take our prognostications with a grain of salt. That said, if there's one wager you can bet the house on this year, it's that Boston's Bodega Girls will spend 2011 on a giant winning streak, whether they like it or not. Lock it up.

R.E.M. | Collapse Into Now It's tough for a band nearly 30 years into their singularly influential career not to dissolve into an adjective. But R.E.M. have taken their moniker on quite a musical journey.

Wye Oak | Civilian Very quietly, Wye Oak have put together an impressive run. Not musically quiet, of course — their specialty is massive guitarscapes that seem an impossibility from just a duo.

Amon Amarth | Surtur Rising Every hessian band duder ever will tell you that the new album is the same as the previous one, only heavier and more brutal. And even if that's true, it's hard to pull off in real life, where the will to be heavy often leads to riffage that is shrill and speedy or, worse, deadeningly uninventive.

ATLAS GENIUS | WHEN IT WAS NOW | February 20, 2013 Atlas Genius are schooled students of modern pop architecture, seamlessly bouncing from Coldplay-styled acoustic rock to fizzy Phoenix funkiness to deadpanned Strokes-ian guitar chug. But When It Was Now is more like an alt-pop NOW compilation than a joyous synthesis.

FOALS | HOLY FIRE | February 11, 2013 Even at their most expansive, Foals are digging into more primal territory.